PlayStation boss Jim Ryan is retiring in 2024

Jim Ryan, President of Sony Interactive Entertainment, has announced that he will retire in March 2024, bringing to a close an almost thirty year career with the PlayStation business, in which he has held a variety of senior positions at the company.

In the announcement, Jim Ryan said, “After 30 years, I have made the decision to retire from SIE in March 2024. I’ve relished the opportunity to have a job I love in a very special company, working with great people and incredible partners. But I’ve found it increasingly difficult to reconcile living in Europe and working in North America. I will leave having been privileged to work on products that have touched millions of lives across the world; PlayStation will always be part of my life, and I feel more optimistic than ever about the future of SIE. I want to thank [Kenichiro] Yoshida-san for placing so much trust in me and being an incredibly sensitive and supportive leader.”

Ryan has been a strong leader of PlayStation since 2019, having been deputy president to John Kodera for a year prior, who was a more temporary appointment after Andrew House stepped down in late 2017. Ryan was quick to shuffle the deck of the PlayStation leadership that year, with Guerrilla Games founder Herman Hulst stepping up to head of PlayStation Studios, though this was arguably forced upon him with Shawn Layden’s seemingly sudden decision to leave the company.

Since then, the PlayStation business has continued to boom. Ryan led them through the launch of PlayStation 5 in 2020 amidst the pandemic lockdowns, they’ve dealt with the semiconductor supply shortages of the following years, and PlayStation Studios has supplied a fairly steady stream of big budget AAA games.

However, there have also been big forward-looking changes behind the scenes. Sony has reacted to Microsoft’s major spending spree by making significant acquisitions of its own, from Insomniac and Bungie to PC porting specialists Nixxes, with these furthering new ambitions. First party PlayStation games have come to PC under his tenure, while still launching first of PS5 and PS4, and there’s a new push to release a wash of live service games through the next few years.

Ryan has also felt the need to be rather combative over the last few years, starting with stating that Sony “believes in generations” when Microsoft publicly embraced cross-gen games – both companies were heavily spinning what they planned in this regard – and then more vociferously with Microsoft’s ongoing acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Ryan wanted to see the deal burn to the ground, making statements calling Microsoft’s proposed cross-platform deals “inadequate“, and refusing to bend and sign a deal to the extent that it probably hurt the FTC’s court case. There was also that really weird email about cats and dogs, when he should have been supporting abortion rights in the US.

With PlayStation 5 now a well established platform, and selling like the hottest of hot cakes, this is a good time for Sony to go through a leadership transition, but there’s no announced successor to Jim Ryan’s position. From October 2023, Sony Group Corporation President, COO and CFO Hiroki Totoki will take on the role of Chairman of SIE, and will then become Interim CEO of SIE on 1st April 2024, but it’s not clear who will step up to the role on a more permanent basis.

Whoever it is will have a solid foundation of the PS5 to work with, while still having time to put their stamp on plans for the PS6 and future of the company.

Source: Sony